Even on Holiday ...

Well, it's still holiday so, although it's nearly over, there are no exciting travel stories with which to enthral my readers this week . . . and only one that wasn't exciting!

At holiday times things are different - no work means no alarm clock, so I could get up when I woke up ... though there was no compulsion, and I flatly refused to do so one morning at 5.0 am!  It's not only been a season of celebration, but of tidying up loose ends.  Just before Christmas I checked my premium bonds, as I did some time mid-year (it's clearly not one of my priorities).  I discovered that, back in July, when I was busy getting angry about a couple of prizes that I'd never received, and making declarations and arrangements for payment to be made - at that very moment - I was winning another small prize that, in its turn, wouldn't arrive on my doorstep!  I wonder where they go.  Is there an attractive home somewhere for misguided Bond prizes? Today, after the same catch-up procedures, (and fortunately missing hailstones as big as peas) I paid the warrant into my bank.

I've had a chance to look back and note other things that happened during the year.  One of my friends spoke of carrying out a formal A to Z review, and I commented that E was for Enniskillen, where I was sent on a job during April. (You can read about it here.)  This was the town where my great-uncle settled in the late nineteenth century, and when I've finished the particular slice of family history that's gripping me at the moment I intend to assail the difficult peak of on line research into Northern Irish records.  The Republic is fine, and there are many pre-partition resources that cover the whole of Ireland, but the six counties post-1923 seem a closed book . . . so far as I've learned up to now, at any rate.

Today, as I walked to the bank, I reflected that there's another letter I could have added to my alphabet of 2013.  W is for walking-stick, for it was last summer that I started using one.  It's not that I'm really disabled, and in some ways it seems very embarrassing - almost play-acting - to carry it, but it does make walking just that bit more comfortable, and I can go to places that I'd no longer consider walking to without it.  I recall my mother complaining endlessly about an ankle that had been a trouble to her as long as I can remember.  Whether the problem was caused by some external assault in her youth, or had always been there I know not, nor do I know whether, if the latter, such problems can be inherited - I rather doubt it.  However, there is definitely a weakness in one of mine that is difficult to describe with the kind of precision that would warrant specific treatment.  It just aches if I walk very far, and with the stick I can walk further before that point is reached.

Things are different at holiday times, I said.  Church on Sunday was different, too.  The day began with breakfast in the church hall, where I was asked politely across a bacon roll whether I'd had a good Christmas.  After affirming that I had, and replying to the next question that, yes, I had stayed at home, I added that I would be going away the next day, in order to spend the New Year with my cousin.  "How far will you have to travel?"  I was amazed at the precision and the casual air with which I said, "Only 105 miles!"  Even in holiday mode the driver in me comes to the fore when called upon.  So too, I found do traffic problems abound at holiday times.  My homeward journey yesterday was somewhat in excess of that 105 miles, owing to a hold-up on the M1 that sent me halfway around Leicestershire to find a quicker route home than sitting in a traffic queue.

Am I pleased, then, that things will be back to normal on Monday?  Yes, on the whole, I think I am.  While all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (they say . . . and who are 'they', to know?), I'm sure the reverse is also true - it certainly is in my case, as you can tell by the foregoing waffle!